Elena Araoz

Elena Araoz is a stage director of theater and opera as well as an actress. As a director, she works internationally, Off-Broadway and across the country.

The Drama League has recently named Araoz as the inaugural Beatrice Terry Artist-In-Residence at the Drama League. With the support of this residency, she will complete her play Plastic Drastic, her commission for the Rose Theatre in Omaha (a three-story-tall environmentally-aware music-theatre commedia adaptation of The Odyssey, Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner and Hansel and Gretel), which she will then direct for their 900-seat theatre in early 2016. Also this season, Araoz will continue her development of the play she originally wrote and directed as a 2050 Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop titled Two Arms and a Noise, a physical theatre piece about the life of an indigenous Peruvian woman. For her creation of Two Arms and a Noise, the Latino Theatre Commons in 2015 named it one of "thirty-six [Latino] plays and writers that everyone should know.” She will also direct Kia Corthron’s Force Continuum with Fordham University.

Araoz recently directed the collaboratively-created Off-Broadway piece Architecture of Becoming by Kara Corthron, Sarah Gancher, Virginia Grise, Dipika Guha, Lauren Yee (Women’s Project at City Center). Other Off-Broadway productions include the American premieres of two Carl Djerassi plays, Phallacy, starring Simon Jones and Lisa Harrow, and Three on a Couch.
Internationally, she directed the world premiere of Li Tong Chen's The Power in Beijing, the first English-language play commercially produced in Beijing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream for Prague Shakespeare Festival in the Czech Republic, and the world premiere of Jaclyn Villano's Unanswered, We Ride for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, Scotland (which was also seen at 59E59 and Last Frontier Theatre Conference).

As a director, Araoz is attracted to epic stories, and her productions are known for huge dance-like theatrics and acutely naturalistic acting. Her acclaimed operetta War Music, which she adapted with composer Paul Philips from Christopher Logue's retelling of the Iliad, and devised with six performers, stages the bloodiest scenes from the Trojan War. War Music, commissioned by performance ensemble Aurea for the FirstWorks Festival, was also presented by the New York Institute for the Humanities, Chicago Humanities Festival, the Chorus of Westerly, and toured New England. With New York’s St. Fortune Collective, she directed the site-specific theatrical event Wood Music, which toured through and around the historic Florence Mill in Omaha and turned the entire building into a musical instrument for the audience to play with the band nestled inside.

The New York Times has praised Araoz's productions as "striking," "primal," "wild," "stirring," and "refreshingly natural" and The Boston Globe as "riveting," "dreamy," and “vivid.” As her productions are critically acclaimed for superb acting, she regularly teaches acting at universities and young artist programs.

She has worked extensively with Sir Jonathan Miller, most recently as Choreographer and Associate Director for his La traviata at Vancouver Opera and has worked on his Broadway King Lear starring Christopher Plummer and multiple operas at Lincoln Center, Seattle Opera, BAM and Glimmerglass Opera. In 2015, she served as Associate Director with Sir Richard Eyre on Ghosts at BAM. She also served as Assistant Director to Steven Soderbergh on The Library at The Public Theatre and Darko Tresnjak on Antony and Cleopatra at Theatre for a New Audience.

New York acting credits include Amelia in House of Bernarda Alba (Pearl Theatre Company), Helena in A Midsummer Night's Dream (American Globe), and Diana in All's Well That Ends Well (New York Classical Theatre). Regionally, Johnna in August: Osage County (Arden Theatre Company), Aouda in Around the World in 80 Days (Triad Stage), Lila Mahnaz in The Rant (InterAct Theatre) and multiple new play workshops at Geva Theatre Center and PlayPenn. Currently screening worldwide, she is featured in the award-winning green screen feature film Mars by Geoff Marslett.

Araoz is a New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspect, a Time Warner Foundation Fellow Alum of the Director’s Lab at Women’s Project Theatre (2012-2014), a New Georges’ Affiliated Artist and Audrey Resident, and a recipient of the Dr. David Farrar Opera Stage Director Grant. She holds her MFA in Acting from the University of Texas at Austin and is a proud member of SDC, AEA, AGMA, Canadian Actors' Equity and SAG-AFTRA (eligible).